Since their introduction, the capabilities and the number of services and features for cellular telephones have steadily increased while the cost of ownership and operation has decreased. At first, these mobile telecommunication devices operated on analog wireless networks that enabled voice communication and simple paging features. Later, digital wireless networks were introduced for cellular telephones to provide more advanced features for voice and data communication, such as encryption, caller identification and transmitting and receiving short message service (SMS) text messages.
Some cellular telephones also incorporate many of the features originally provided for in handheld electronic devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs). Relatively simple PDA features such as keeping a list of contacts, a calendar, appointments, and the like have been generally integrated into recent cellular telephone models.
More recently, some cellular telephones enable the browsing of web pages on the Internet or other on-line services.
However, unlike PC, cellular telephones or wireless mobile devices are inherently limited in their input capability. Often time complex operations have to be accomplished or navigated using a standard 12-key input keypad.
FIG. 1 illustrates a typical prior art approach to navigating a menu. As illustrated, typically, the top menu items, “message”, “call log”, “profile”, “setting”, and so forth have to be navigated with a predetermined entry item. For the illustrated embodiment, it is the “message” menu item. From there, the top menu items may be navigated in a predetermined round robin order. From each of the top menu items, the user may return to the “root” of the menu.
Each of the top menu items includes sub-menu items. For ease of understanding, only the “call log” menu item is illustrated in an expanded form showing the sub-menu items under the particular top menu item.
Similar to the top menu items, the sub-menu items, “missed calls”, “dialed calls”, “received calls” and so forth have to be navigated with a predetermined entry sub-menu item. For the illustrated embodiment, it is the “missed calls” sub-menu item. From there, the sub-menu items of “call long” may be navigated in a predetermined round robin order. From each of the sub-menu items, the user may return to the “call log” top menu item.
Each of the sub-menu items may further include additional sub-menu items. Again, for ease of understanding, only the sub-menu items of the “received calls” sub-menu item are illustrated in an expanded form.
The sub-menu items of a sub-menu item may be navigated in a similar manner.
In other words, under the prior art navigation system, once navigated into a sub-menu item level, a user has to back track to the entry top menu item, before being able to navigate into the sub-menu items of another top menu item. Moreover, once navigated to the sub-menu items of another top menu item, the user has to similarly back track and re-navigate back to a previous sub-menu item, if a need/desire arises to a previously navigated sub-menu item.
Thus, typical prior art navigation approaches are relatively cumbersome, and especially undesirable for input facilities limited wireless mobile devices, such as wireless mobile phones.
Accordingly, a need exists for a more efficient and friendly manner of navigation between menu items and/or activities.